Aria:

Aria is a multi-disciplinary, socially-minded strategist and educator who hired me to redesign the landing page for their portfolio site in April of 2020. They needed help simplifying their text-heavy interface, conveying the relevance of their values-based approach, and clarifying their offerings to potential clients from a wide variety of fields. You can see their original landing page below:

For the redesigned landing page, I wanted to ensure that a wide variety of users could see their needs reflected in Aria's offerings, without having to wade through an excessive amount of text. I focused on three main overhauls:

■ Constructing a visual language to cut down on text and create a more cohesive user experience

■ Restructuring the landing page and suffusing it with Aria's core values

■ Establishing clear offerings that accurately reflect the needs of the user

In the original site, text was carrying more weight than it needed to—I replaced much of it with a succinct and sophisticated visual language. Using a collection of modern, approachable shapes illustrated by artist Kelly Fry, I created a series of graphics that played with visual themes of variety, overlap, and connection to convey the diverse, intersectional, and collaborative nature of Aria’s work.

In the initial design, "I" statements and text-heavy blocks were obscuring users' priorities. I broke up these blocks of text and diffused Aria's core values into easily digestible content that users were likely to scan the page for: what it's like to work with Aria, and recent work experience that reflects Aria's values. I replaced the original headline with "your" and "our" statements that focused on the user's needs, confirming Aria's relational approach in the process.

All this editing and restructuring left plenty of space for one key element that was missing from the original site: a clear and succinct list of Aria's offerings. This list allows users to see their needs reflected in the work that Aria provides, and flows neatly into an invitation to contact Aria and begin working together.